A team of MIT researchers has found that in many instances, replacing human workers with AI is still more expensive than sticking with the people, a conclusion that flies in the face of current fears over the technology taking our jobs.
As detailed in a new paper, the team examined the cost-effectiveness of 1,000 “visual inspection” tasks across 800 occupations, such as inspecting food to see whether it’s gone bad. They discovered that just 23 percent of workers’ total wages “would be attractive to automate,” mainly because of the “large upfront costs of AI systems” — and that’s if the automatable tasks could even “be separated from other parts” of the jobs.
That said, they admit, those economics may well change over time.
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